I met Jordie ten years ago, during the summer after I graduated from high school, on the way to a Ben Folds Five concert in Brooklyn. I had been stood up by my friend Irene, in exchange for her boyfriend and his new Winnebago. With or without Irene, I was going to that concert.
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Growing up on the Jersey Shore, the times I’d ventured into New York were almost always either to see a lavish musical with my quickly-deteriorating mother, or to cut school and walk around St.Marks Place with Bob (who came accompanied by Babs and Bette). Brooklyn, as far as I’d known, was just a massive clump below Manhattan. So this trip to Coney Island was a big deal to me. But I was soon to be a true New Yorker, and navigating through the subways and the homeless people was something I had to get used to.
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When I stepped off of the train and into this completely new world, I heard the first roar of thunder blast above my head like a plane crash. As I walked down the street toward the boardwalk, I became aware that everyone else was walking in the opposite direction, back toward the subway. One guy even yelled to me, “Turn around, Sweethaaaat, we’re in for a doozy! I hear they’re closing the boardwalk!”
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I chose not to listen to his words of wisdom, nor did I listen to the constant angry rumble in the sky. It was late afternoon then, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was midnight, that’s how dark it was. When I got to the boardwalk entrance, I swear I saw a mile-long bolt of bright orange lightning hit the Atlantic directly in front of me, followed by a crash of thunder, causing me to yelp and cover my ears. Then, as if someone turned on the bathtub, a rush of pissed-off rain came spilling from above, instantly soaking me, and any hope I had of asserting my independence through Ben Folds Five.
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Perhaps the rain got into my ears and reached my brain, I don’t know – But at that moment, having no idea which way to go, I did what any confused lost depressed quirky naïve impressionable imbalanced yearning gal would do: I stood still.
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It was the early 90’s then, and I was in a fashion crisis stuck somewhere between Kurt Cobain and Cyndi Lauper. The day I met Jordie LaGru , I was wearing a red pleated miniskirt with black crinoline that I’d personally sewn on, red fishnet stockings with two strategically placed rips (one on the left thigh, the other on the right calf), and worn-out combat boots with pink laces that I’d gotten second-hand, much to my mother’s horror. (“Luna, you look like a demented mountain climber from a third-world country.”) On the top, I wore a skin-tight navy blue tank top that was skinny enough to show off my leopard-print bra, and the entire outfit was completed with a gigantic plaid flannel button-down, left open, with the sleeves rolled up. The shirt had belonged to my father, and unbeknownst to Mom, I had found it in a box in the attic a year prior. It was the only thing of my Dad’s I owned, and I had to pretend it was Bob’s, or Mom would have cut it up. When I first wore it, I was afraid she’d recognize it, but I soon became aware that my mother’s memory was about as reliable as a goldfish, and quickly fading. If I’m going to be totally honest here, I’ll tell you that I actually had never washed it, for fear that the little piece of my father’s I had kept in tact, and my own, may wash away.
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Which struck me as sad and maddening as I stood on the boardwalk of Coney Island staring up at the sky, my kohl eyeliner now streaked across my then slightly-freckled face. As careful as I’d been about maintaining the musty scent and rustic façade of Dad’s shirt, all it took to wash it away was an insensitive thunderstorm.
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Another loud crash of thunder rattled across Brooklyn, beginning in my heart, I thought, and I gathered up every bit of furious energy I had, stared right into the eye of the storm, and at the top of my lungs screamed to no one and everyone, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!”
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Which was precisely the moment when Jordie LaGru came into my life.
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I heard him before I saw him. “And I thought I liked Ben Folds!” was the first thing he said. I still, to this day, have no idea where he came from, because all of a sudden, he was there. I was startled to see another face. For some reason, I thought I was the only asshole standing outside in this torrential weather.
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“I didn’t know anyone else was here!” I screamed, over the storm. This new guy was ten feet from me, but he may as well have been in Jersey.
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“I gathered that!” he screamed back.
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I vividly remember instantly being attracted to him, in a sort of superstar way. That’s what he looked like, a rock star who had not yet fully come into his own. On the day I met Jordie LaGru, he wore a bright yellow jersey that had chopped off in the middle, revealing his thin midriff. The remainder of the material was wrapped around his head. He had on loose bell-bottom blue jeans and orange converse high tops. His close-cropped curly hair has stayed the same to this day (though on occasion nowadays is accompanied by a goatee). The two of us stood facing each other, not sure what to say or do as the rain soaked our late afternoon.
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“The concert is cancelled!” Jordie continued.
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“I //gathered// that!” I yelled back, and I realized I sounded slightly mocking.
Right then I knew that this stranger would be a very important part of my life. When we’d discussed it later, Jordie agreed that he’d felt it too. To this day, I maintain that when you meet someone is a soul-mate, be it romantic, platonic, or otherwise, you know it immediately. There have been a small handful of people with whom I’ve felt this connection: My tenth grade history teacher, Mr. Franklin, my ex-fiancé, Nate, Mike the Shrink (as strange as that sounds), and Jordie.
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I was still registering his question when he stepped forward and asked it again, but this time he was close enough that he didn’t have to scream. I remember noticing his long thick eyelashes then too. “You okay?” he repeated.
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“This was my dad’s shirt.” I responded, matter-of-factly.
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And, as if he completely understood, Jordie frowned, put one hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’m sorry.”
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I wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t even look down (a bad habit which was very characteristic of me for those late teen years – still is, actually). Instead, I stared at him for a good fifteen seconds, which in stranger-land counts for at least a couple minutes, if not an eternity.
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Then I smiled big and strong and real, because this guy was so fabulous, so so fabulous, a truth that I new before I even knew his name.
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He smiled back like I was his long lost sister, and put out his hand. “I’m Jordie LaGru ,” he stated.
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“Luna Bloom,” I reciprocated.
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“It’s nice to finally meet you, Luna Bloom.”
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And that was that.
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An hour and a half later, Jordie and I sat on top of a clothes dryer, at Manny’s 24-Hour Laundromat in Brighton Beach. We had managed to find a CVS, where we bought a package of Hanes Men’s undershirts, two men’s bathing trunks, and flip-flops. I must have been a sight to behold that evening – you could see right through my t-shirt that I’d knotted up on the side to my leopard print bra. I had a little boy’s pixie haircut, a teeny tiny waist, and gigantic tits. I’m sure I looked like a hooker-gone-wrong.
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As our clothes dried under us and the skies spilled outside of us, Jordie and I sat Indian-style, drank stale black vending machine coffee, and laughed until our inside’s hurt.
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Jordie told me about his insanely wealthy parents, William and Nadine, who lived between two estates – one in Fire Island and the other in London. A few months before, Jordie said, his mother, having no idea her son was gay, walked in on him and his then boyfriend, Mark, having sex in the library room at the house in England, where Jordie and Mark were vacationing. When his mom walked in and dropped her teacup on the floor, causing a loud shatter, Jordie and Mark quickly pulled apart and went into some improvisational modern dance. Jordie then nonchalantly said, “Oh, hi mom! Mark and I are practicing for a performance art piece we’re doing at school next semester.” The two naked boys then simultaneously started leaping all over the place, until Mark finally landed in a mid-air split, Jordie catching him. It was their grand finale. Not knowing what to do, Nadine LaGru began to applaud, saying “Bravo, boys, bravo!”
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This story made me laugh so hard that the owner, Manny I guess, had to shush me twice. Jordie laughed too. “That, Luna, is what we call ‘Denial’!”
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After finishing Performing Arts High, Jordie was now in his second year as a dance major at Julliard. He was planning on dropping out, he told me, but no one else knew that. When I asked him why, he said that school just wasn’t for him, but I suspect it was because Mark was there too, and had broken his heart into a million pieces when he slept with some bartender. Even though he’d never admit it, I still don’t think Jordie is fully over that.
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When he began at Julliard, his parents bought him a small apartment in Hell’s Kitchen – one that I would grow to know quite well in the coming years. //They bought it with cas/h//, Jordie said, as if he was talking about a pair of sneakers.
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Six months later, when he finally broke the news that he’d dropped out, William and Nadine had little to do with their son. They sent him birthday and Christmas cards (signed, “Sincerely, Mother and Father”), each enclosed with checks for five to ten thousand dollars. Jordie continued to cash them, until four years ago, when word got out that his ex-boyfriend, Mark, had died from a severe case of Pnemonia. He’d had AIDS, we found out from a mutual friend. From that day on, Jordie donated all of his parent’s checks to organizations that helped people with HIV. “A slap in the face to my folks,” Jordie told me one night. “It’s good I dropped out of school,” he said, “What else would have been their excuse to write off their gay son?”
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That night at the Laundromat, I opened up, too, telling Jordie all about my father. It was, I realized, the first time I’d even spoken of him out loud, as it was completely taboo in my house.
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He listened intently as I told him the sad story of which I had yet to make sense. “My dad died when I was four of some kind of really aggressive cancer. I don’t even know what kind,” I admitted. “My mom never talks about it. I only know that they caught it at its last stage and he died within six weeks.”
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“Do you remember him?” Jordie asked.
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“Vaguely,” I said, but I’m not sure if they are real memories or just dreams I’d had.”
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I had dreams about my father incessantly, until I was about 9 or 10, when I finally told my mom. She responded coldly, I remember, telling me that I wasn’t letting his soul rest. I had no idea what that meant, but he did stop appearing in my dreams. For a while thereafter, I dreamt I was looking for him at Six Flags Great Adventure, but everywhere I went all I saw instead were gigantic rabbits dressed in suits. By the time I turned 13, I stopped dreaming altogether.
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We bonded that night, Jordie LaGru and I. We were two loners, both of us the only child, both of us struggling to keep our heads above water.
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We talked until four a.m., when the rain finally let up and our clothes were back on our bodies. Dad’s shirt was surprisingly soft, I remember, and somehow, even though no longer rustic, Jordie being there made its new form more acceptable – as if, like me, the shirt decided that sometimes, in order to stay functionable, we have to change a little.
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The one thing Jordie and I didn’t talk about that night was my mom. I wasn’t ready to go there, and I think Jordie sensed that, because he never asked. In fact, as involved in each other’s lives as we became from that night forward, as privy to each other’s business as we were, as present and familiar a force we evolved to with one another, he never ever asked me about Mom. Some words, some deep places of pain, you just don’t go to until the timing is exactly perfect. With Jordie LaGru and I, the time wouldn’t come until several years later, when I needed him more than ever, when in order to continue to live in whatever sanity I had remaining, I needed to open that door for my best friend, I needed to tell him the truth about my past, and my present – and the overwhelming force that was my apple tree – my mom.
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But that didn’t happen that night, and as the sun came up, Jordie and I exchanged phone numbers and promised to talk that night, to make sure the other got home safely. Did I know then that keeping other safe was part of what would fuel our friendship for so many years to come?
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I don’t know – but I certainly had my suspicion about Jordie LaGru –